


To Those Who Disappear

by Disasternoj



Category: RWBY
Genre: (a bit), Abandonment Issues, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Let Ruby Swear, Post Vol. 4, Reunion, Ruby POV, Second Person Present Tense, Short Hair Weiss, Vol. 3 / Vol. 4 Spoilers, White Rose - Freeform, just because
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 04:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11524758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disasternoj/pseuds/Disasternoj
Summary: Weiss finds Ruby in a Mistralian inn after fleeing Schnee Manor. There are emotions, haircuts, and quite possibly cuddles. For White Rose Week, Day 7: Reunion.





	To Those Who Disappear

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This fic takes place immediately after the end of Volume 4. It’s never explicitly stated whether the place they’re staying at the end is Haven or just a Mistralian inn, so I’m interpreting it as the latter for the sake of the story.
> 
> (Thematic music is linked at the ♫, as in all of my works.)

[[♫]](http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=PmSK9bVyWTw#Kiminoitanatsu)

The sounds of daily life wash over you as you sit, motionless, at the bar. The common room of the inn buzzes dully with the chatter of Mistral’s working folk, the sporadic clinks of utensils on plates, the occasional low murmur about you and your bright red cape.

The patrons have mostly adjusted to your presence in the few days you’ve been here, waiting for Uncle Qrow to recover. You’re still something of a novelty- they don’t get many Huntresses in this part of town, especially ones as young as you are. At least they mostly leave you alone now. Alone with your thoughts, and the glass of water you never quite get the courage to replace with something stronger… if the bartender would even let you.

Sometimes you just need a break from the rest of “Team RNJR”. You love them to death, you really do, but… they’re not really your team. Sometimes it seems like Jaune is the only one who understands when you leave by yourself like this, to sit and remember the team you had before. The partner you had before.

You sigh, softly, then giggle a little to yourself as you reach for your glass again, imagining what she would say if she saw you moping around like this. Faintly, you hear the sound of the door banging open behind you for the umpteenth time today.

_“RUBY ROSE!”_

The unexpected, familiar shout freezes you in place, hand outstretched. All the months of training and honing your reflexes in the wilds of Mistral fly straight out the window. A Beowulf could have burst through the wall and you still wouldn’t have moved an inch.

It’s all you can do to turn your head ever so slightly to the side, before your vision is swamped with white.

Thin, strong arms wrap around you from behind, disheveled white hair blocking your right eye entirely. “I missed you, you dunce,” comes a whisper in your ear.

_Weiss?_

But… she _left_. Her dad took her away. She was gone, just like Blake... just like Yang. You always did your best to keep the smile on your face, to keep up appearances, be hopeful that things would turn out well… but you never really thought she would come back. In your heart, you knew that your team, your partner, your… _Weiss_ , was lost to you.

And yet here she is.

 _“Weiss?”_ you repeat, this time outside of your own head. Your paralysis seems to loosen as you start to give voice to your inner turmoil, and you twist your head around enough to see…

That’s definitely Weiss. You’d recognize that scar, the brilliant white locks curling around under her eye, absolutely anywhere. What you _don’t_ recognize, as you pull slightly away from her to get a better look, is the floaty, mostly-tangled mess of hair that ends abruptly a few inches above her shoulders.

You twist away from her, ignoring the soft sound of protest, and slide off your seat, turning around to face her. As your eyes shift back to the impossible woman, you glimpse a trail of scattered chairs and disgruntled patrons behind her, immediately dismissed from your thoughts as unimportant.

You spend an instant and an eternity staring at her, taking in the once-pristine cobalt and light blue dress, now _literally_ slashed and burned in several places, partially concealed along the right arm by light armor. The faded brown boots- somehow, you’ve never seen her wearing anything but heels. The scattering of cuts and bruises that tell you she’s been pushing even past her Aura. Myrtenaster at her side, somehow the only thing untouched. It’s fitting. Weiss never did let herself rest until her weapon was in perfect condition- you always had that much in common.

As the thought hits you, your gaze finally meets those panicked ice-blue eyes, and you’re almost knocked off your feet by the force of the realization. She’s here. Weiss is _here_. She’s really standing right in front of you, after all this time. Distantly, you feel hot trails start running down your cheeks.

Before you know what you’re doing, you’re wrapped around her and hanging on for dear life, bawling like the kid you swore you’d finally left behind at the fall of Beacon.

\---------------------------------------------------------

Once the others had calmed down and stopped crowding around, babbling questions, and (in Nora’s case) attempting to hug Weiss, the first coherent sentence came from Ren.

“Is there anyone coming after you? Will your father try to take you back to Atlas again?”

You feel Weiss stiffen, still wrapped around one arm as you are. (You pulled her up here to your room personally- you’re not going to let go of her again until you’re sure she won’t vanish, a mirage all along.) Ren just cut through to the heart of it, as usual. You hadn’t even thought to ask that, so caught up in the knowledge and sensation of Weiss here with you again.

After a moment, she bows her head, admitting, “I don’t know. I… The only reason he might care is that I defied him. _I’m_.” Her voice trembles, almost cracking, and you feel the tremors all throughout her body. “I’m not the Heiress anymore,” she chokes out, expression not matching her words, as if she still didn’t quite believe them herself.

Your eyes widen instinctively, shock paralyzing you for the second time today. Not the Heiress? Her role as the next head of her family’s corporation was a huge part of who she is! You can’t just take that away from her…

And then you realize that’s exactly what happened. One of the pillars of Weiss’ life was pulled out from under her, while she was still reeling from the loss of Beacon. Something inside of you burns fiercely, and you swear to yourself, silently, that you’ll be a new pillar for her. A stronger pillar. A pillar that drinks milk.

You nearly miss the start of Weiss’ story, you’re so wrapped up in your new resolution.

It takes a good hour and a half to recount the tale of her forced return to Atlas, her family’s betrayal, and her escape and journey to Mistral, especially with all the interruptions. You’re guilty of relatively few of those, knowing how much Weiss hates that. You just can’t help yourself sometimes.

It turns out that Weiss was trekking across the wilds of Mistral on foot at about the same time you were. She arrived only yesterday, and followed the rumors to the inn you’ve been staying at. You’re not the most inconspicuous of groups, you suppose- and you’re glad of it this time.

You refocus just as Weiss is telling them about their reunion downstairs. Sort of.

“Can you believe that the second thing out of her mouth was ‘You cut your hair?’” Weiss asks, tone critical, but looking over at you with that tiny, warm smile reserved for you. You bet she thinks you’ve never noticed that smile- but it makes your day whenever you can coax it out of her. Seeing it again now fills you with warmth from head to toe.

“It’s a drastic change!” you protest, filling the gap left for easy banter, trying to distract the rest of them from how you’d been openly staring at Weiss. It doesn’t seem to have worked, though, judging by the slight color rising in her cheeks.

Damn it. Now she just looks even more gorgeous.

\---------------------------------------------------------

“Are you sure about this?” you ask.

Weiss glances back over her shoulder at you with an uncertain half-smile. “No,” she admits, “but it’s unsightly as it is, and if anyone’s going to cut it, I want it to be you.”

A soft thrill runs through you at her words. You know, somewhere in the back of your mind, that this is her attempt to make her absence up to you. Placing her appearance in your hands is a profound gesture of trust, for Weiss, and the fact that she trusts you the most distracts you from anything else.

“Okay, then!” you reply, huge smile impossible to suppress, even as it wavers from the fear of messing this up. You gently take hold of a few locks of pearly hair and trim them to an even curve with the scissors in your other hand.

The soft _shnick-tss_ of your scissors fills the silence, calming your nerves, the tufts of hair floating to the ground a constant presence at the edges of your vision. It really must have been a rushed job to leave her hair so ragged and uneven. Admittedly, slicing through your ponytail with a sword in the middle of a fight would tend to do that. You’re certain you can make something of it, though. You’re the only one Yang’s trusted to trim her mane for years- not that she ever let you really _cut_ it. Any pair of scissors you tried would probably shatter on the tangles that make up most of its mass, anyway.

Neither of you have anything to say, and so the time passes in quiet twilight, until you’re nearly done. Weiss gave you instructions on how short she wanted it to end up, and now sits motionless while you work. It seems like she’s used to this- the perfect stillness, the waiting- and it dims your mood a bit more to think of how much she must have had to do this for any number of reasons.

However, as you finish up the cut along the right side, leaving white locks to curl softly just below the back of her head, you notice that same soft smile has come back across her face. Eyes closed, breathing deeply, trusting herself to your care, she looks… happy. You can’t help but want to keep that relaxed, joyful expression on her face as long as you possibly can. It’s not something that happens every day, that’s for sure.

You find yourself watching her face as much as your hands, and your scissors slow nearly to a stop. You’re utterly unprepared when her brow creases ever so slightly and her eyes snap open, concerned at first, then startled at your closeness, and you watch helplessly as emotion flashes through those pale eyes.

You’re caught in her gaze, one hand gently cupping the side of her head, heat flooding through your face. You can’t look away, and you never want to.

Neither of you speak. No words are needed- none can express how much passes between you through gaze alone.

If asked, you would never be able to say who leaned in first. It didn’t seem to matter at the time.

All you know is that your lips have found hers; that Weiss is kissing you and you’re kissing her back with everything you have. Her lips are soft, cool, _Weiss_ in all the ways the matter as they move against yours. The scissors slip from your hand and clatter to the floor, forgotten.

When you break free of each other and gasp for air, your eyes flutter open to meet once again, and all you see in hers is joy. Pure, unbridled happiness that prompts you to drag yourself into her lap and kiss her again and again until neither of you can remember why you ever wanted anything but this. Each other, here on this old wooden chair in this old wooden inn, is all you will ever need to be happy, to be loved, to be free from all the darkness in the outside world.

And you can only think…

Maybe everything will be all right after all.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is my very first RWBY fic, and therefore also my first attempt at writing White Rose! 
> 
> Please leave a comment and let me know what you thought! A romantic I may be, but skilled at writing romance I am not. If you liked it, let me know why! What parts made you smile? If you think some parts (or even the overall structure) could be improved, tell me about it! Feedback is what authors thrive on. Have a question about some detail? Feel free to ask!
> 
> I tried to focus on Weiss and Ruby in this short fic, possibly at the expense of detail in the surroundings and the rest of team RNJR. Any thoughts on that? I’m vaguely aware that some new RWBY character shorts may have come out? But I haven’t seen them yet if so, so they aren’t included in my canon for this story.
> 
> (For those of you who listened to the mood music I provided: no, I do not know why a game called Yanderella exists. I’m familiar with this song from a different game- this happened to be the only upload I could find.)
> 
> For my Undertale-centered readers: fear not- I’m not abandoning Starry-Eyed for RWBY fics. I’ve just always wanted to write something to celebrate my love of the show and my OTP. This one-shot is my contribution to the White Rose Week event being run by @the-heart-alchemist on Tumblr.
> 
> A big thank-you to my betas, Vozw and [Afterados](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5698514/afterados)! I’ll likely do more writing for RWBY in the future once I get some more solid ideas nailed down- I have an inkling for a Sunrider fic in the back of my head, as well. Stay tuned!
> 
> Happy White Rose Week, everyone.


End file.
